Will Self - The Book of Dave

At the beginning of the year the cabbie had been clearing a minimum of seven hundred pounds every week. A flat fucking neves, no joke, mate, double-bloody-bubble fer Sundays … Then BCCI collapsed. Gang of fucking coke heads, it never looked like a bank to me anyway, I remember ferrying those dodgy wallahs to their gaff on the Cromwell Road, all smirk an'no bloody tips … And the unemployment figures cranked up to three million. No matter, the Tories were still back in come April, rotten bunch, half of them shtupping their secretaries, the other half on the take … Then in June Lloyd's lost two billion. Granted they were a bunch of dumb toffs — only too happy to take unlimited liability before the shit hit the propellor, but they weren't just Names to me, mate — they were fares. . Then only last month the stock market goes fucking tits-up. Five billion off shares in a morning and the big bull needed a fucking Bic round its chops — too late, it's gone an' turned into a bear … Then Paddies all over the fucking shop in their fertilizer dump trucks. Bomb upside the NatWest Tower, Bomb in fucking Victoria Street — I blame … my wife …

All of this is only braggadocio, confessed to the windscreen of the cab as if there were still a fare sitting on the tip seat, ear inclined to the sliding window. When it winds down, Dave is left with his diminished self: a big little balding man who's afraid to look at his own sparse brow in the rearview mirror … RE-CREATE YOUR HAIRLINE … DEVELOPED IN JAPAN — but why? I've never seen a bald Jap … NEW GENERATIONS STRAND-BY-STRAND REFUSION WITH TECHNO-FUSE CAN RE-CREATE YOUR HAIRLINE AND PROVIDE A TOTALLY NATURAL–LOOKING HEALTHY HEAD OF HAIR. TECHNO-FUSE IS INTEGRATED WITH YOUR SCALP AND THE PROCEDURE CAN BE PERFORMED OVER A PERIOD OF TIME, INVOLVES NO SURGERY AND NO ONE NEED EVER KNOW … CALL WIGMORE TRICHOLOGICAL CLINIC NOW. NOW!

The copywriter's medicalese has become Rudman's own private thoughts, a pabulum to chew over: Good News about hair loss. Perhaps if I did it, she'd fancy me … Because it's all about him, the way Michelle turns away in the bed they still, mysteriously, share and edges to the extreme far side of the mattress, where she rolls herself into a chaste belt of duck down.

The meter went on ticking. Christ, I'm tired … The little runt was four now, yet it was taking a long time to recover from being woken in the early hours of the morning. When Dave had been doing nights, he'd come in, then drift off, only to be yanked up again by a cry from the slumbrous woodlands. Dave had fought his way through whippy boughs of fatigue to where Carl trampled and snuffled in his cot. Dave had felt stunned as night after night snapped in two or three pieces. This, he had realized, is how soldiers feel in combat. . It was then that the ordinary heroism of parenthood struck Dave hard in his selfish face. It was striking him still: They oughta give you a fucking medal … Maclaren buggies lined up by the Cenotaph, spunk-drunk mummies slumped over their handles, bums up to be taken again. The Prime Minister steps forward — a martial insurance clerk in his steel helmet hair — and pins decorations shaped like feeding bottles, teat-on-teat.

The Sandy Man's lads were two versions of himself: one lanky, stretched on the rack of adolescence, a stipple of happy pimples on his outsized jaw; the other compact, chubby even, a lush blond fringe in his mooncalf eyes. The Sandy Man said, 'On to Liverpool Street, then, cabbie,' and Dave replied, 'No problem,' because he desperately wanted there to be NO PROBLEM. In the City, if there's one street knocked out by roadworks, then you're edging round for fucking hours. . Leave on right Queen Victoria Street, forward Threadneedle Street, left Bishopsgate. . Dave was convinced this was a mid-week dad: the Sandy Man was too eager to ask questions about new teachers and forms, to pick up on the quick rhythms of lives irretrievably lost for him, the paradiddle of young hearts. How does it feel, Dave wanted to ask him, to be like a nonce, dragging these kids off to yourpervy cottage in the sticks For One Night Only?

Liverpool Street was a massive bollix of renovation and construction. The Victorian facade was being torn off, a new one of silky granite slipped on. Inside, a transept of baguette stalls and knicker booths was being laid across the end of the platforms. In the old Victoria Station there were whole wheeling flocks of scabby pigeons, everything was smoky and sooty, iron pillars shooting up into dingy glass ceiling… Dad used to take me down to the Cartoon Cinema … Left me in there while he went into the hotel next door for a few shorts. .

To get to the set-down Dave had to wrestle the cab down temporary passageways of scaffolding and tarpaulin, humping over rubber sills. The Sandy Man had his twenty out long before they'd stopped. He folded it into a strip that he twined between his clever fingers, then poked the origami earnings at Dave. Funny the way people handle money, playing with it, touching it up … wouldn't do it with any other thing … 'Ain't you got anything smaller, guv?'

'Sorry — but no.' The Sandy Man took his change and the three of them disappeared into the clatter of the station. Fucking wanker-little tossers. . He'd forgotten to tip. Once Dave ranked up, he had a long wait for another fare in the diesel-stinking darkness. He recognized a few faces looming in nearby windows from infrequent trips to cab shelters, or snaffled lunches at the Cafe Europa in King's Cross but no one he wanted to talk to. They'd only wanta moan some … Moan-fucking-moan. . Magic Tree air fresheners dangled from their rearview mirrors. All these big blokes, lost in a tiny bloody forest… Dave thought of Benny, his granddad. I really oughta go and see him.

CLARINS AT HARVEY NICHOLS pulls Michelle up short. SKINCARE CENTRE. FACE, BUST, BODY AND SUN. TRAINED THERAPISTS. Yeah, right … Five stormy years of marriage have given her a piratical internal monologue; she stands on the tilting deck of her consciousness wielding a tongue like a cutlass. Trained bloody slags is more like it. In from Bromley and Selhurst, Traceys and Shawns without an idea in their tiny minds except Darren's cock and she-said he-said … DETOXIFYING FACIAL AND HAND TREATMENT. Still, I have to admit that sounds good.

Michelle stopped scanning the Standard to look at the scumbled junction of Kentish Town Road and Leighton Road: the neo-Gothic horror of the Assembly Rooms pub, and a daft pavilion with glass roof and cast-iron stanchions beneath which dossers lolled like filthy pashas. Carl was slumped beside her eyeing an apricot. 'C'mon, love,' Michelle said, 'it's nice, it's like a sweetie.' The four-year-old bit into it with frank dubiety, his pretty, freckled features — hers really — screwed up in distaste. 'Iss gusting,' he said and spat. REFRESHING CUP OF HERBAL TEA. If I don't get out of this shit … She levered the sticky yellow blob off Carl's T-shirt and popped it in her own mouth … I'm gonna do something stupid. DELICIOUS FRUIT COCKTAIL.

In the two and a half days a week Michelle looked after her son she tried to make sure Carl had a balanced diet — plenty of fruit, no fizzy drinks, green vegetables, brown bread. She had kept abreast of debates about immunization. She had campaigned for the right nursery-school place. It was ironic that now it wasn't quite so bad between her and Dave she felt like leaving more than ever.

When we were first married, it was alright. I was touched … by him … They bought the house on Kingsford Street in Gospel Oak. At National Childbirth Trust classes, held by a woman called Sarona in her endless living room up on the heights of Hampstead, Michelle didn't only learn how to breathe, she found out how to be a different woman. Dave couldn't partner me, he was working all hours … But Sarona did. She had perfect style. . beautiful deportment… black trousers, hammered silver jewellery. . nothing vulgar … wispy shawls … that very aquiline Persian nose … I didn't even know what aquiline meant before that … When I went back to work again I had 'it', at last, a … seriousness … a poise … having a kid helped … I was grateful to Dave for-for the whole set-up. It doesn't mean they don't put you down or stare at your tits, but once you're a mum their moves are … slower, more obvious, sadder.